George B. Thomas
OK, everybody — we've spent the past few episodes talking about big picture ideas, personal stories, essential mindsets, and indispensable principles in the inbound space.
Today, we're diving back into the deep end of tactical pool! And we're doing so with a VERY special guest today, HubSpot's Head of Product Awareness and Search Authority for Growth, Justin Champion.
If you've ever taken the HubSpot Content Marketing Certification, you know Justin, as he is the lead professor for that course. Liz was particularly excited to have Justin join us for her own reasons. She met Justin years ago back when she worked at Quintain Marketing (and then IMPACT later on) – and when pillar content and topic clusters were just starting to take root as best practice for content strategies.
Today, however, we're walking down a different conversational path to tackle a topic that many deem to be quite controversial — link-building.
Say that word around any group of seasoned marketers, and watch the hot takes fly. For the most part, many fall into the camp that link-building is an outdated, downright spammy practice that gets little to no results. If that's you, stay tuned, because Justin is here to rock you world with an entirely new perspective on link-building.
Sure, some marketers have debased the strategy of link-building to those a "spray-and-pray" practice of firing off countless transactional emails begging for link placement. But, according to Justin, link-building (when done right and with an actual strategy behind it), can be one of the most lucrative ways for you to set yourself up for inbound success in the long run.
Get ready to debunk some myths and have your minds blown, folks. Justin is taking us to school this episode!
What we cover in this episode
- What has changed in search over the past few years that is essential for content creators to understand?
- Why is link-building a critical part of the response to the way search has evolved, particularly in the past 3 to 5 years?
- Why does link-building have such a bad reputation, and is that bad reputation deserved?
- Why is link-building an essential practice as part of a greater SEO strategy?
- What are the most common misconceptions inbound practitioners have about link-building, and what should they be seeing instead?
- What does a smart, HUMAN-centric link-building strategy look like?
- Given the amount of effort a great link-building strategy takes, is it actually worth it? Is the link-building juice worth the squeeze?
Extra resources
- How to write a blog post outline the easy way (+ examples)
- The last SEO content strategy guide you'll ever need (ungated, free guide)
- You need to write (and market) like a human (+ examples)
- Why your sales enablement strategy is failing you (HubHeroes podcast)
- 47 content strategy scoping questions (+ best practices)
- Why you need a human-centric content strategy (HubHeroes podcast)
- What does a modern content strategy look like? (HubHeroes podcast)
- What is Inbound Physics with Max Cohen (HubHeroes podcast)
